An email pings into my inbox. It’s a client asking for a tone of voice guide. Woop! That highly sophisticated digital marketing strategy of mine must be working.

I take a deep breath and wonder if it’s worth explaining the difference between tone of voice and brand voice, because I’d put money on them wanting the latter. (And yes, I’ve gone against those principles in the title of this post, but we must appease the gods of SEO, no?)

And then the tricky bit – I try to work out what they actually want and need in that ‘guidelines’ document. I’m gonna need a cuppa for this.

There’s been many a conversation among copywriters and brand managers about what should go in a brand voice guide. What’s useful, what’s overkill and what’s (dare I say it) a bit boring?

This fine balance between too little and too much has to be juggled with budget, and with how much strategy work the brand’s already done – and that’s why I don’t have a fixed price for this kind of thing.

I’m gonna tell you how I’d approach all this, promise. But first, allow me to introduce some of the usual suspects you’ll find in a brand voice guide:

• First up in our roll call (and most useful, in my personal opinion) is a description of the personality or persona that you’re writing as – and we’re talking the persona of the brand here, not the persona of the customer. A short paragraph like this helps whoever’s writing picture the persona in their head and get in character.
• You might also have “something to believe in”. That might be a big, bold belief. It might be a statement about why you’re better. It might be a bugbear that you have against the industry. It might be something you’re particularly proud of in what you offer your customers. Whatever it is, it gives the writer something to grab onto and ground their writing, and it gives them a solid starting point to start writing from.
• An idea of how to flex the tone depending on the context.
• Next, we have a list of tonal attributes, along with a brief explanation of why we’ve chosen each one and what it means for the brand’s writing.
• You might also have examples of on-brand copy, with notes about why it works. This could be an annotated sample of good copy, or a series of samples which compare on-brand and not-so-on-brand examples.
• And finally, there’s the question of writing tips. I know plenty of brand voice strategists who get grumpy about standard writing tips like ‘write how you speak’ or ‘use contractions’ appearing in voice guides, but let’s be realistic – if that’s going to help a non-writer capture the voice, it ABSOLUTELY belongs there.

And that brings me to the most important point in all this:

The brand voice guide has to be written to meet the needs of the people who are going to be using it.

As a very unscientific rule of thumb, I think copywriters find a description of the brand persona, something to believe in and a set of well-developed examples most useful. For non-writers, tonal attributes and writing tips (along with a few basic examples) seem to work well. And for both, I’d explain how to flex the tone of the brand voice to different contexts.

But really, all this will depend on the client. I know it’s reassuring and easier to have a one-size-fits-all approach you can rely on, but I’m a huge believer in tailoring your work to the needs of the brand you’re working with – otherwise you can’t be sure it’ll work for them.

Need a little (or a lotta) help with your brand voice?